Balanced

Tomorrow's the Autumnal Equinox. This morning, about 3 a.m., while walking Si Si, I saw the Harvest moon. It was full and very white and high in the sky, not the low, huge, orangish moon I usually think of as Harvest. The sky was, at least briefly, clear and the stars glimmered. After Si Si took care of her immediate needs, we went back to bed. Three a.m. on a Saturday is too early to start the day.

August 2013 full moon         © harrington

Unless, of course you're a duck hunter and shooting starts legally one-half hour before sunrise. By that time today the clouds had moved back in and, I can vouch that at one half hour before sunrise it's difficult to impossible to be sure of what species you're shooting at. Anyhow, at the duly appointed hour volley after volley went off. I don't know where the ducks came from since I've seen precious few in the air or on the water the past month or so. These are some of the points Dennis Anderson raised in his column [read complaint]  yesterday about Minnesota's adjusted duck opener rules. We used to open at noon, when it was easier to tell what you had chosen for a quarry. Now, we may be exploiting ducks the way we do fracking sand, natural gas, copper-nickle ore, farmland and forests. "Harvest" our resources today, they, and we, may be gone tomorrow. Didn't work out too well for the passenger pigeon.

pair of ducks up high       © harrington

Think about what we would do without the grace of the world Wendell Berry writes about in The Peace of Wild Things. Thanks for listening. Come again when you can. Rants, raves and reflections served here daily.